Today, I was faced with one of the most beautiful decisions ever--whether or not to rob from Canada Dry. As I sat in my rocking chair in the Lower Union reading my copy of Moby Dick, a large dirty truck emblazoned with multiple cans of glistening Canada Dry products came into my line of sight. Not only was this Canada Dry truck unattended for an absurd and unsettling amount of time, it was also parked in the most inconspicuous place a Canada Dry truck could possibly be parked. No one would even know that a case had magically vanished into the thick, frosty air. That Canada Dry truck was asking for it. It was as if the clouds had parted, a vast trumpeting resounded, and a booming voice from the heavens issued out saying "Behold ye, behold ye, these fruits of my labor art thou's for the taking."
The fact that a few doves flew over and landed on the truck in a pool of effervescent light also gave me the same feeling. Come, take of my vast stores of Snapple products! Come, fulfill yourself in my diet beverage! Come, take cases of this free beverage here only for you! Torn between my copy of Moby Dick and the Canada Dry truck I found myself being pulled in two opposing directions like a dwarf eating lembas bread. Social morae were appearing at that moment, urging me to fight or flee. Fight for my right to rob Canada Dry blind for putting their products in such an easy to reach place, or flee from the resulting penalties of law were I ever to actually rob Canada Dry blind. Needless to say, I fled. Or rather continued reading in my rocking chair. But then there was that nagging itch. The truck was still there, how in all of God's green earth was that truck still there saying, Come on you know you want to partake of my fizzy beverages. That's just the thing! There was no ginger ale in the ginger ale truck! Just snapple. Not enough to tempt me.
Which reminds me, there's this brilliant brew of ginger ale called "Ginger Beer" that I have not had since frequenting The Calf Fiend Cafe and I mean to drink some within the next week when we head down Southern MN. I digress.
In any case, I said no to the enticing Canada Dry truck and soldiered on, aware of a greater award, Ginger Beer, in my near future. Besides, I have Herman Melville to console me: "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing...And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker...it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but part of the general joke."
Thar she blows,
M
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